It doesn’t keep Bulls head coach Billy Donovan up at night, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening or that it hasn’t been for weeks.
The rest of the NBA appears to have a blueprint for how to exploit the Bulls’ flawed roster, and it won’t stop until players start digging their toes into the mud and insisting, ‘‘Enough is enough!’’
Who knows which team deserves the credit. Maybe it was the Trail Blazers, who used their size and physicality to erase a 21-point deficit in the fourth quarter — outrebounding the Bulls 18-6 in the process — Nov. 19 and forced center Nikola Vuecevic to make a game-winning three-pointer at the buzzer to prevent a total collapse.
Or maybe it was the Heat and X’s and O’s wizard Erik Spoelstra, who have owned the Bulls for years and humiliated them 143-107 on Nov. 21.
Either way, since that fourth-quarter nightmare against the Trail Blazers, the Bulls have been outrebounded 271-221, including a 72-49 discrepancy on the offensive glass. That’s a dangerous way to live in the NBA.
Add in teams going to big lineups, opposing ballhandlers attacking the Bulls’ guards and easy baskets neutralizing the up-tempo game they want to play, and a team that opened the season with five consecutive victories has gone 3-5 in its last eight games to fall to 9-10. Three of those losses have been to the bottom-feeding Pelicans, Hornets and Pacers.
‘‘If you look at it, every time a game is played, there is film out there on us,’’ Donovan said. ‘‘And you get out to a 5-0 start, people start to watch, start to see things, and you try and start to exploit things.’’
Opposing teams have done more than start to exploit the Bulls’ weaknesses; they have done so. The one saving grace Donovan and his staff are hanging on to, however, is that forward Isaac Okoro — their best defensive player — has missed the last four games with a back issue and that physical backup center Zach Collins (surgery on left wrist) might make his regular-season debut in the next week.
Even so, though, Donovan warned his players that adding Okoro and Collins doesn’t mean the issues suddenly will disappear. There has to be more resistance, especially in the backcourt.
‘‘At some point individually, you’ve got to shut the water off,’’ Donovan said. ‘‘There are going to be times where you can’t bring help all the time. Teams see things: ‘Drive right through them, pound the offensive glass, make them play in space, make them guard the ball.’ And we’re going to have to do that better than we are.’’
That responsibility falls directly on guards Coby White, Josh Giddey, Tre Jones, Ayo Dosunmu and Kevin Huerter.
That was the case in the final minutes of the Bulls’ loss Saturday to the Pacers. Pascal Siakam would work to get the ball against Giddey, back him down in the post and score an easy basket. Siakam is listed at 6-8 and Giddey at 6-7, so there’s not a huge size advantage there.
At some point, Giddey has to fight to keep his position. Or, as Donovan put it, face the waves until he reaches the raft.
‘‘The life raft is out there,’’ Donovan said. ‘‘The bottom line is, we’ve got to participate in our own rescue and swim to it. The film that’s out, you try to exploit the opposing team’s weaknesses. We try to do the same thing.
‘‘The more film, the more games people can look at [and say]: ‘Hey, what does Chicago look like in their wins? What do they look like in their losses? What do they do well? What don’t they do well?’ More and more games, more and more numbers to determine how you’re going to game-plan for us.’’
Want more insights? Join Grow With Caliber - our career elevating newsletter and get our take on the future of work delivered weekly.
